


a rose, blooming, dying, in your lungs

by mayfieldmayhem



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Mike's not in this but she's trans, Period-Typical Homophobia, Physical Abuse, Steve is too but I might just make a whole other fic on that, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, anyway hey I love trans Jonathan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 01:46:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12422493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayfieldmayhem/pseuds/mayfieldmayhem
Summary: A look at Jonathan Byers.





	a rose, blooming, dying, in your lungs

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [OpheliaMarina.](http://archiveofourown.org/users/OpheliaMarina/pseuds/OpheliaMarina)  
> hey so I'm gay? and so is jonathan byers bless. this fic deals a lot with how jonathan interacts with the world around her and the people in it, whether it be negative or not.
> 
> warnings for implied/lightly touched upon physical abuse, bullying/violence, emotional abuse, the word "dyke," and the f slur!!
> 
> please tread carefully!!

Jonathan clenches her jaw, bringing her arms over Will’s chest protectively as her father screams at him, glaring as hard as she can. All Will wanted to do was draw. Just because he doesn’t want to go hunting doesn’t make him less of a boy, or less of their father’s son. As much as it pains her, she tries not to look at Will’s face, because she knows that if she does look she’s going to start screaming - she hates the wounded way Will looks at their father. The way his eyes seem to hold more fear than his body can handle, the way he shakes against her chest, tears streaking down his reddened cheeks, begging their father to please stop yelling he’ll be good, he’ll be so good just please don’t hit him this time, and something feral and white-hot is born in Jonathan’s stomach, and she knows if she had claws and fangs they would both be bared, but she is human and all she has is her glare and the thin line of her mouth, the words that come from a tongue like a blade and cut like no knife Jonathan’s ever owned.

//

Her mom is the only one that really understands her, in all honesty, other than maybe Will and she knows it’s always going to be this way. She knows it when her mom gives her a camera when her father gives her a gun, knows her mom is aware that pictures are the only thing she has ever wanted to shoot, knows her mom’s known what college she’s wanted to go to since she was six years old. Her mom comes into her room at night after every ugly spat between her and Lonnie, telling her it’s okay, he just doesn’t understand, she’s allowed to be angry, no one ever said she _had_ to love Lonnie or just accept the things he does. She tells her it’s okay that she’s not a boy, not the model son her father wanted, and that if all they have in this world is each other then so be it. All she needs is her and Will, and she’ll be okay.

//

When Jonathan is twelve she finds Will in the bathroom with their mother’s lipstick smeared across his cheek, and she can’t help but be grateful that it was her that found him, because lord knows what would’ve happened had their father walked in on his only son like this, and Will is sobbing so hard he shakes. When Jonathan takes him into her chest and asks him what this is about, he stutters but eventually forces the words _I’m not a boy I’m like you_ out, and that is the moment Jonathan realized she’s always had a little sister.

She takes Will’s face in her hands and kisses her forehead.

//

The day that Will wears a soft light pink sweater and black leggings to school is the day she comes home with a black eye. She’s got a bloody nose and tears in her left sleeve, and her leggings have runs in the knees, and she’s crying harder than Jonathan remembers ever seeing her, her hands in white-knuckled fists at her sides, and she just folds in Jonathan’s arms, her breathing going high and thin in a way that actually scares Jonathan, because her chest is heaving and she can barely force words out, and Jonathan swears she doesn’t let her go for maybe a half hour, because oh god she’s crying so hard and she’s hurting so much. Not for the first time, Jonathan entertains the thought of beating the shit out of the kids that did this to Will. But she’s not her father and she never will be. So she clenches her jaw and holds Will tighter. It’s all she can do not to start crying too.

//

Jonathan started growing her hair out when she stopped giving a shit about what her father said, and the kids at school just love to mess with her about it. The outsider, the weird kid, the one that never goes anywhere without her camera, kind of grungy. That Byers kid that hasn’t fit in since the first grade, cutting her hair at mid-neck like some wannabe boy band member. One boy tells her she looks like a dyke and she can’t help but laugh about it, because he has no idea how much truth there is to his words.

//

When Jonathan sees Nancy Wheeler and Barbara Holland come to school in pretty matching skirts, she feels this pang of jealousy.

It shouldn’t even be that big of a deal, but they get to be openly feminine, they get to wear what they want and look great doing it, and Jonathan knows she doesn’t have that freedom, might never have it, and she can’t help but feel jealous. 

When Nancy catches her staring she smiles just a little, and Jonathan doesn’t understand the warm flutter she gets in her chest.

//

“You a faggot just like your little brother?”

Lonnie’s drunk again and Jonathan’s wearing this pretty light blue nail polish that her mom got for her, and Will is hiding in her room because she’s sketching and Lonnie hates that, and Jonathan says, “So what if I am? By the way, I’ve already told you that Will’s not my brother.”

If he wasn’t pissed off before, he sure as hell is now and he makes sure Jonathan knows by backing her up against the wall, all in her face with whiskey on his breath as he murmurs darkly, “You better watch what you say to your father, young man.”

And she clenches her fists at her sides, silent. She folds her lip between her teeth and glares as hard as she can.

//

Jonathan’s known Steve Harrington since the sixth grade and she still hasn’t figured him out yet.

“You’re pretty girly for a boy, Byers, you know that?”

“What’s so wrong with being a girl, Steve? Do you like, have a problem with girls?”

“No,” Steve says, and his cheeks turn an embarrassed shade of pink, and he murmurs, “No, I don’t have a problem with girls.”

“Then why should it matter, me being girly?”

Steve’s mouth opens and closes as he thinks of a response, “You’re a boy.”

And Jonathan shuts her mouth, because she is fourteen years old and a high school freshman and she doesn’t need that kind of trouble. She just shrugs, casting her eyes to the ground so Steve can’t see them, shoves her hands in her coat pockets and says, “There’s no one way to be a boy. I’m just...weird.”

Jonathan swears Steve must be able to hear her heartbeat in the silence that follows. Her mouth is dry and she hears the blood rushing in her ears.

“Well yeah. Everyone knows that you’re weird. You’re always walking around with that camera, and you like, live in the dark room. I was just saying that with hair like yours and clothes like that, you’re just a little bit girly.”

“Well. Thanks for pointing it out.”

“Yeah.” Jonathan inhales, and pushes past Steve while barely clipping his shoulder.

//

When she was nine, her father took her out hunting and made her shoot a rabbit. She vividly remembers the crushing guilt, the agonizing fear that she had committed a crime so awful that it was unforgivable. She cried for nine full days after that and when she came home crying her mom had yelled “What the hell did you do to Jon,” and her father had screamed right back. She remembers how it felt to breathe, the way it felt like she was breathing through a straw, and the way she made herself sick with all the crying. Her father called her a pussy and told her to man up, to stop crying before he gave her something to cry about. Her mom on the other hand held her and told her it was okay. She told her it was okay to cry and that her father just didn’t understand. Jonathan didn’t talk to Lonnie for a full week after she stopped crying, and he didn’t seem to mind.  
She swore then that she would never willingly hurt anything again. And so far, she’s managed to make good on that promise, thankfully.

//

When Will goes missing, Jonathan’s entire life is flipped upside down and everything goes dark, and she is so guilty that her chest aches. Maybe if she’d just been there when Will got home that night, she’d still be here and okay and Jonathan wouldn’t have to wonder what, if anything, happened to her little sister.

//

She teams up with Nancy Wheeler and Steve Harrington to destroy the monster, something she never saw coming, and the moment she tosses her lighter into the gasoline, she feels something align in her chest because she’s destroyed what took her sister.

Afterwards she bandages up hers and Nancy’s hands and cleans up Steve’s face. Her knuckles ache when she looks at Steve’s bruised eye, and she feels bad because she did that and she can’t help but apologize once or twice or maybe four times. Steve just smiles.

//

Will is sick and frail but she’s alive, she’s home safe and that body they pulled from the quarry wasn’t hers, and Jonathan cries when Will takes her bandaged hand and asks if she’s okay, because after everything that’s happened to her in the past week she’s worried about _her_ , and Jonathan thinks she has never been so grateful before. She knows things might not be okay, but what matters is that Will’s home and she’s going to be okay, even with the tubes in her nose and the I.V.s in her arms, and Jonathan swears she’s never going to let anything happen to her ever again, because she’ll be there. She’s always going to be there.


End file.
